Common Quotes - Page 19

• The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.

  Andre Maurois

  Simple, Jargon, Philosopher

  "The Art of Writing". Book by Andre Maurois, 1960.

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• Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts?... Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.

  Mark Twain

  Law, Insanity, Want

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2441, GENERAL PRESS

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• The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables.

  Charles Lamb

  Friends, Party, Going Away

  Charles Lamb, Thomas Noon Talfourd (1838). “The letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his life. The poetical works”, p.196

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• Common sense is not an issue in politics--it's an affliction.

  Will Rogers

  Issues, Common Sense, Affliction

  Will Rogers (1980). “Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: The Harding”

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• It is men of desperate fortunes on the one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who go abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road.

  Daniel Defoe

  Adventure, Men, Hands

  Daniel Defoe (1719). “The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner”, p.10

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• No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark.

  Daniel Defoe

  Character, Dark, Men

  Daniel Defoe (2011). “Moll Flanders”, p.94, OUP Oxford

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• It gave me a great notion of the credit of our present government and administration, to find people press as eagerly to pay moneyas they would to receive it; and, at the same time, a due respect for that body of men who have found out so pleasing an expedient for carrying on the common cause, that they have turned a tax into a diversion.

  Gertrude Stein

  Men, People, Pay

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• Mead's anthropology had many other red, white and blue- blooded virtues. One was the common anthropological conceit, out of which she made a career, to the effect that the ultimate value of studying other cultures was the use we could make of them to reconstruct our own - a heady kind of intellectual imperialism, as if the final meaning of others' lives was their significance for us.

  Margaret Mead

  Blue, Other Cultures, Careers

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• All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.

  Isaac Asimov

  Choices, Insanity, Humanity

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• Before games are played in common, no rules in the proper sense can come into existence. Regularities and ritualized schemas are already there, but these rites, being the work of the individual, cannot call forth that submission to something superior to the self which characterizes the appearance of any rule.

  Jean Piaget

  Self, Games, Appearance

  Jean Piaget (1997). “The Moral Judgement of the Child”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

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• I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on law, learning to guide me; for I had never read a page in a law book in all my life.

  Davy Crockett

  Honesty, Book, Men

  Davy Crockett, Thomas Chilton (1834). “A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, of the State of Tennessee”, p.135

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• Jowett, in his day, did probably more than any other single man to let some fresh air into the exhausted atmosphere of the [Oxford] common rooms, and to widen the intellectual horizons of the place.

  Benjamin Jowett

  Men, Air, Oxford

  "Asquith". Book by Roy Jenkins, p. 22, 1964.

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• Courage is worthy of respect when displayed in the maintenance of legitimate claims and in the repelling of aggressions, bodily or other. Courage is worthy of yet higher respect when danger is faced in defence of claims common to self and others, as in resistance to invasion. Courage is worthy of the highest respect when risk to life or limb is dared in defence of others.

  Herbert Spencer

  Courage, Self, Risk

  Herbert Spencer (1874). “The Study of Sociology”, p.202, London, D. Appleton

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• No adversity is in kind or degree peculiar to us; but if we survey the conditions of other men (of our brethren everywhere, of our neighbours all about us), and compare our case with theirs, we shall find that we have many consorts and associates in adversity, most as ill, many far worse bestead than ourselves; whence it must be a great fondness and perverseness to be displeased that we are not exempted from, but exposed to bear a share in the common troubles and burdens of mankind.

  Isaac Barrow

  Adversity, Men, Degrees

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• Tranvestism is far more common among men, I noted, because it originates in the primary relation of mother and son.

  Camille Paglia

  Mother, Son, Men

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.

  Isaac Newton

  Space, People, Bears

  Isaac Newton (1966). “Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World: The motion of bodies”, p.6, Univ of California Press

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• What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism.

  Martin Amis

  Teeth, Poor, Joyce

  Martin Amis (2010). “Experience”, p.116, Random House

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• Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Gold, May, Matter

  Thomas Hobbes (2010). “Leviathan - Revised Edition”, p.222, Broadview Press

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• The most part of men, though they have the use of reasoning a little way, as in numbering to some degree; yet it serves them to little use in common life; in which they govern themselves, some better, some worse, according to their differences of experience, quickness of memory, and inclinations to several ends; but specially according to good or evil fortune, and the errors of one another.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Memories, Men, Errors

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different: And diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of the common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Sight, Names

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• If we could suppose a great multitude of men to consent to the observation of justice, and other laws of Nature, without a common Power to keep them all in awe; we might as well suppose all mankind to do the same; and then there neither would be nor need to be any civil government or commonwealth at all, because there would be Peace without subjection.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Law, Justice

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil”, p.130, Simon and Schuster

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• The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Philosophy, Book, Law

  "Leviathan". Book by Thomas Hobbes. The Second Part, Chapter 26, 1651.

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• But if one Subject giveth Counsell to another, to do anything contrary to the Lawes, whether that Counsell proceed from evil intention, or from ignorance onely, it is punishable by the Common-wealth; because igorance of the Law, is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the Lawes to which he is subject.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Ignorance, Men, Law

  "Leviathan". Book by Thomas Hobbes. The Second Part, Chapter 25, 1651.

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• And whereas many men, by accident unevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour; they ought not to be left to the Charity of private persons; but to be provided for, (as far-forth as the necessities of Nature require,) by the Lawes of the Common-wealth. For as it is Unchariablenesse in any man, to neglect the impotent; so it is in the Soveraign of a Common-wealth, to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain Charity.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Hazards, Charity

  "Leviathan". Book by Thomas Hobbes. The Second Part, Chapter 30, 1651.

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• Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.

  Tony Benn

  Please Me, Old Wounds, Energy

  "Mr Benn delays EEC meeting". "The Times" Newspaper, December 13, 1975.

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